


Almost Dawn

by vacant houses (the_lost_robot)



Series: Fractured [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Friendsheith, Gen, Keith (Voltron)-centric, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, Supernatural Elements, White Paladin Shiro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 13:27:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14285910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_lost_robot/pseuds/vacant%20houses
Summary: Maybe it's a side effect from piloting the Black Lion. Maybe it's the price Keith pays for being Shiro's anchor in the real world.OR:Shiro and Keith adjust.





	Almost Dawn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [szzzt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/szzzt/gifts).



> I never planned on writing a sequel to Equinox as the intention was for it to be an open-ended story. This feeling still stands and I think that it works better that way. So consider this a sequel but not. A possible scenario that stems from the set-up of Equinox. An AU to an AU.

"I think," Keith's shadow deliberates. "You should go left."

A choice of three passageways are laid out before Keith. Each is lit with that familiar purple the Galra Empire favours. The chrome floors gleam, polished to a shine. It's unusually well maintained, given that this area wasn't on the ship's map.

But they still haven't found the prisoners Marmoran intelligence had assured would be there.

The other Paladins were busy with their assigned tasks. Lance and Allura guarded the outside space in their Lions, preventing the Galra from bringing reinforcements and retaking the battleship. Pidge and Hunk held the command center, hacking into the database to pull whatever intel they could find. It was also to keep the Galra from regaining control of the ship.

That had left Keith to go and track down the missing prisoners.

Alone.

But not.

Pidge doesn't have any digital eyes on him. She'd guided him through the ship for the most part, searching through both empty and enemy occupied rooms. But after a while, Keith's shadow had turned it's head and said mildly, "Hey, there's something behind that wall."

Behind that wall had turned out to be a hidden passageway. It had led Keith down what felt like two levels before branching out into the three choices he was faced with now.

He asks. "Any real reason for left or did you pick that at random?"

Keith can't see the smile - a shadow has no features after all but he knows the cadence and the weight to them that he can hear it in Shiro's voice when he responds. "It's an educated guess. I can see faint pulses of blue that way. I think that's our missing prisoners."

"Blue," Keith echoes. "Not purple."

The silhouette that stretches from Keith's feet, far bigger and longer behind him than it has a right to, turns its head in the other direction. "Some purple to the right," his shadow reports. 

Things that Shiro perceived as purple tended to be Galra. It sounded like there were some soldiers in the opposite direction. "Alright," Keith allows. "Left it is."

"You sound sceptical," Shiro notes, with some amusement.

Keith turned down the left corridor, bayard at the ready in his hand. Shiro's ability to see through walls was handy but it did have it's limitations and tended to be localised to Keith's immediate area. "I'm just hoping that this route takes us there directly and it doesn't turn out that it's one of the other ones that winds round to where they're keeping the prisoners."

"Doubling back is also an option," Shiro reminds him, gently teasing.

"You've led me so off course in the past that septupling back was an option. I think I'm allowed a degree of doubt over this."

A pause. “I'm not entirely sure septupling is a word," Shiro replies, trying to regain his dignity.

Ten steps down the hallway, there's a mechanical hum and a loud clunk from above. "That's...not good," Keith says, immediately throwing himself into a sprint for the exit. There's no waiting around to see what is happening, long experience said it was some sort of trap and he had no desire to be caught in the fallout.

He ducks into the next room, just in time for a bright light to erupt down the hallway he was just in. Even from where Keith is, he feels the radiating heat and he's glad that he hadn't waited around to find out what he was dealing with.

"Keith? Keith!" the voice at his feet demands.

"I'm okay," the pilot of the Black Lion replies, once he caught his breath.

"What was that?" Shiro asks urgently. The levity has long since left his voice. "I couldn't see it."

A quick glance backward, the bright light is probably some sort of plasma laser, Keith figured. Probably lethal.

"Some sort of trap in the ceiling," he replies. "Don't worry about it."

 

* * *

Shiro stands outside the White Lion. 

A trap. A trap in the ceiling and he hadn't seen it and it had nearly gotten Keith.

The world that swirls before him out here is painted with shadows. The landscape is a sliding greyscale. The walls of the Galra battlecruiser blur in and out. Layers are peeled away depending on the distance Keith is from them. The metal walls melt to reveal pipework and wiring then the next room on when they get closer while the walls behind them shade themselves back in as they get further away.

The world had trembled when Keith had broken into a run. Each step shook it down to its foundations. Now, it settled as Keith caught his breath. It seems that they're in a storage room of some sort. Shiro's twisted vision strips away the closest boxes and he can see the supplies neatly stored away inside them.

In the distance, wisps of blue flicker.

The prisoners, Shiro hoped. It could be them. It should be them unless this was a group of aliens with extremely poor timing aboard the ship for business. It was unlikely but not impossible.

In this monochrome world that poorly mimics the real one, the Galra always show up as shades of purple from afar. It's probably the consequence of millennia of Quintessence exposure but it makes them easy to spot.

Shiro sometimes wondered if it would be the case for Keith, if he could see him. If the traces of Galra blood would be enough to tint him purple. When the distance was bridged and those pulses of life resolved themselves into people, he found that their faces were greyed out, blurred and distorted to the point Shiro couldn't recognise them. They can't hear him either and not all are able to notice that Keith's shadow didn't match his profile.

But the Paladins suffered none of that. They were the only things that Shiro could see with this strange, strange vision that looked normal. They can hear him too and he can make out their faces clearly. They glowed with their respective Lion colors in this sea of black, white and grey except for Keith…

Maybe it's a side effect from piloting the Black Lion. Maybe it's the price Keith pays for being Shiro's anchor in the real world. It's Keith's eyes that provide Shiro this limited, twisted viewpoint of the world when he's awake and ventures outside the White Lion's cockpit.

No matter how hard they tried, no matter what they did, Shiro can't see Keith.

He can x-ray through nearby walls but Keith's body is invisible to him. Mirrors revealed nothing at all. All he had was Keith's voice, his breath rasping in Shiro's ears. Without Keith, he'd be tethered to nothing, fast asleep in the White Lion's cockpit.

So close and yet so far away at the same time.

It eats away at Shiro sometimes. As does his inability to help right now. He had seen through the ceiling but it isn't always clear to him what he's seeing. A Galra battleship, all kinds of machinery was slotted into every surface. He had seen the system above Keith's head but he hadn't put it together, that it was something dangerous.

"I'm sorry," he tells Keith, wishing, wanting that they weren't separated by two inches worth of the fabric of reality. That he wasn't misaligned and entangled with the ether in the Black Lion's core.

"It's not your fault," Keith replies, in a tone that leaves no room for argument.

Yellow sparks suddenly flare from the outside of the room and Shiro snaps to attention. These flickers, he can't see from afar, only from a few feet away but at least he can still give warning.

"Incoming sentries!"

 

* * *

 

The black bayard forms a sword in Keith's hands and he's already charging across the storage room by the time the door opens. The first drone steps through and is instantly cut down.

The second sentry has barely begun to back up, realising what a mistake this venture is, when Keith drives his sword through its chest. He shoves its body into one of its companions as a distraction. After that, it's quick work to bring down the remaining drones.

In the quiet after the brief skirmish, Keith checks in. "Prisoners?" 

"Close by," Shiro answers him. Keith might not be able to see his face, only the shape of it in his shadow but his long familiarity with Shiro's voice lets him know that Shiro has recovered a small dose of humour when he adds, "Assuming that you were wrong and that this is the right corridor to go down."

"Mmh," Keith thought it over. "Don't really fancy heading back through that laser show."

"Well at least one good thing came out of it, septupling back is definitely not an option with it there."

Keith pauses and imagines it. His hand twitches with the fruitless urge to shove Shiro for the joke.

But Shiro - Shiro was always out of reach.

* * *

In the aftermath of Hassevilius, when they had first realised what had happened, how far away from them Shiro had been flung, Keith had told him:

"We're going to get you out of there."

Keith had told him:

"We won't give up."

Keith had told him:

" _I_ won't ever give up."

If there was someone who could figure out a way to circumvent the fundamental laws of the universe, Shiro would put his money on Pidge. Especially after all the time she had spent researching with Slav. They had made good progress in understanding what was wrong, when Shiro had only the vaguest understandings of his problem.

Understanding, unfortunately, did not mean that they were in any way or shape close to a solution to fixing it.

But if he had to put his money on who could _out-stubborn_ the laws of physics out of sheer tenacity, then hands-down, he'd picked Keith.

Shiro doesn't remember the early days well. Most of his time had been spent drifting, asleep and silent. Static occasionally reached through his dreams as Keith clawed through the ether to assure him that he wasn't forgotten. On rare occasions, Shiro awoke to find team Voltron in battle, desperate and overwhelmed by the enemy and a white bayard waiting in its dock.

Those were the only times when Shiro's little bubble of existence washed ashore into the physical world. The only moments when he was truly alive. He was glad that he still able to help the team, stuck and stranded as he was. But those were the only moments that the universe saw fit to grant him. That and the sparse interruptions Keith managed.

Until one day, things had changed. It's still not clear to Shiro what had happened. What Keith had done. Whether it was just a consequence of reaching out so often that a connection had formed. Or maybe it was a strengthening of his bond with the Black Lion. Or maybe it was just Keith's sheer stubbornness at play, bullying the universe into giving something back.

In any case, Shiro went from barely aware to occasionally awake and watching through this blurred vision of the world. He still sleeps for extended periods of time but Shiro has learnt it's better not to ask how long it's been between each awakening.

It's an improvement. There's two places he can be when awake- either the Black Lion or Keith's shadow. The other Paladins take to checking the Black Lion at random intervals during down time. If they're lucky, they might spot his shimmer of stardust waiting inside.

Hunk and Pidge usually try to take measurements when they chat with him, in hopes of finding a solution one day. Sometimes, Pidge comes in with other projects that she works on in Shiro's company. She works in silence, occasionally, when she isn't having a good day but draws comfort from Shiro's presence. Other times, Hunk drops by to chat about recipe ideas. It's hard to be a judge of what would taste good without actually eating it but Shiro does his best, even though he knows he's out of his depth.

Lance tends to tell him about where the team has been. The people they've met, the ladies that had caught his eye. He talks long into the night. Allura and Coran tell him about Altea. Allura brings the mice and recites Altean stories for Shiro with the mice providing dramatic re-enactment.  Coran...hadn't been able to hear Shiro at first. He wasn't a Paladin but he had chattered easily about the universe that existed ten thousand years prior and held up both sides of the conversation until Shiro's words reached him.

He isn't alone. Far from it. Words cannot express how grateful Shiro is that they're still trying to reach him. Bridge that gap that separates him from the physical world.

But Shiro can't deny the frustration he feels. He can't touch them. They can't touch him. He can see them but they can only see the shadow he casts behind Keith's back or the shimmer in the Black Lion. Everything falls just two inches short. Like if he just strained a little more, stretched himself a little further, he'd make it over.

It's just never enough.

* * *

 

Under Shiro's wonky guidance, septupling back does not occur but tripling back does before they find the prisoners. A crowd of alien faces look up with what Shiro assumes is relief when Keith opens the cell block and let's them up. He can't make out their features but the murmurs that start up sound hopeful and relieved, especially when they are informed that Voltron is here to rescue them. 

The trip back is easier than the trip there because their off-course wanderings had found a service lift that returned to the upper levels. From there, it's a swift run for the hangar, where three of the Lions are stowed. Hunk and Pidge meet them there, then they divvy up the prisoners between them before taking off.

Shiro can feel his energy draining and he knows it isn't long before time is stolen from him once more. He watches as Keith easily evades the Galra ships pursuing them. He can only see purple flickers that haven't a chance of catching up.

He doesn't have to say anything. With contact between them restricted down to sound, Shiro's ears are keyed in even the slightest variation from Keith. There's resignation in his breathing that shows that he knows that their time is almost up.

"You did good today," Shiro tells him sleepily.

"Your directions are getting better," Keith replies. "I live in dread of the day you can see clearly enough to backseat pilot."

It startles a laugh out of Shiro and he can almost feel the small, pleased grin curling Keith's lips. Then a mass of purple swings by and Keith's focus is diverted to his flying. The Lion is sent in a graceful series of twists and turns to evade pursuit.

When Keith speaks again, Shiro wasn't expecting it, nearly lulled to sleep. "I never wanted to follow in your footsteps like this," Keith tells him quietly.

Shiro's heart skipped a beat. He can't see it but he's been told by the others that Keith still wears his red armour. This isn't what he wanted either, for them.

He can feeling the darkness tugging him down and away. He smiles and trusts that Keith will hear it.

"It's an honour to walk in yours, Keith."

**Author's Note:**

> Shiro still can't catch a break because here we are, two seasons down the track from the first fic in this series and this fact is still canon.


End file.
